MS-6590, IDE Problem (2xHDD, DVD-r, DVDRW)

I'm having a serious problem, which i havent been able to solve for
hours
of trial-and-error now. And i didnt find anyone on here who did have
the
same problem before me, but im hoping that someone of you guys out
there can help me out, coz i'm quite frustrated by now.

Here's my situation:

I have a MS-6590 board (KT4 Ultra, AMD XP 2400+ CPU), with the latest
bios i got my hands on (V1.4, right off the MSI website, dates back to
2003)

Up until now i had 2 HDDs running, Seagate Barracuda 7200.7, 200 GB
each,
and one LG GSA-4082B DVD burner drive. No problems ever.

Now, the DVD burner died out, and i got a new one, another LG, GSA
H42N,
and also a DVD-ROM, LG GDR-8164B (coz im watching and encoding DVDs
a lot on my computer), to save my burner drive from another death of
overwork.

Now, here's the thing: no matter what i do, the BIOS won't accept
both
DVD-drives at the same time, only the DVD-ROM, when both are
connected.
When only one of the DVD-Drives is connected, either burner or ROM,
(along with the 2 HDDs of course), all works fine, but both HDDs AND
both
DVD-drives is a no go.

(and all of those versions with switched DVD-drives too)
and i did get the jumpers right too, checked twice every time i tried.

i also tried, goin on cable select, and letting the IDE-cable-
connector colors
decide which is master and which is slave (except for the Prim Master
hdd of course)
(i once read somewhere, that the black connector is always master, and
the grey
one goes to slave, is that information correct?)

But no matter what i do, the DVD-ROM wont show up in bios, when i
connect
both DVD drives.

Oh, by the way: the cable-select-attempt i made, had the effect, that
i DID have
both DVD drives in windows (yay!!) but, guess what, i did NOT have the
2nd HDD
drive in windows..... and this is not an option, i need them both.

So, i'm out of ideas here, and i so hope that anone out there knows a
fix for this,
coz im pretty desperate here. Every help whatsoever is greatly
appreciated!!

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I'm having a serious problem, which i havent been able to solve for
hours
of trial-and-error now. And i didnt find anyone on here who did have
the
same problem before me, but im hoping that someone of you guys out
there can help me out, coz i'm quite frustrated by now.

Here's my situation:

I have a MS-6590 board (KT4 Ultra, AMD XP 2400+ CPU), with the latest
bios i got my hands on (V1.4, right off the MSI website, dates back to
2003)

Up until now i had 2 HDDs running, Seagate Barracuda 7200.7, 200 GB
each,
and one LG GSA-4082B DVD burner drive. No problems ever.

Now, the DVD burner died out, and i got a new one, another LG, GSA
H42N,
and also a DVD-ROM, LG GDR-8164B (coz im watching and encoding DVDs
a lot on my computer), to save my burner drive from another death of
overwork.

Now, here's the thing: no matter what i do, the BIOS won't accept
both
DVD-drives at the same time, only the DVD-ROM, when both are
connected.
When only one of the DVD-Drives is connected, either burner or ROM,
(along with the 2 HDDs of course), all works fine, but both HDDs AND
both
DVD-drives is a no go.

(and all of those versions with switched DVD-drives too)
and i did get the jumpers right too, checked twice every time i tried.

i also tried, goin on cable select, and letting the IDE-cable-
connector colors
decide which is master and which is slave (except for the Prim Master
hdd of course)
(i once read somewhere, that the black connector is always master, and
the grey
one goes to slave, is that information correct?)

But no matter what i do, the DVD-ROM wont show up in bios, when i
connect
both DVD drives.

Oh, by the way: the cable-select-attempt i made, had the effect, that
i DID have
both DVD drives in windows (yay!!) but, guess what, i did NOT have the
2nd HDD
drive in windows..... and this is not an option, i need them both.

So, i'm out of ideas here, and i so hope that anone out there knows a
fix for this,
coz im pretty desperate here. Every help whatsoever is greatly
appreciated!!

Thanx in advance,

Mike Winauer from Austria

Click to expand...

You have whats commonly referred to in the building trades as a
"floating neutral". Exactly the same principle applies here i.e. you
have a floating ground. This is a missing ground either broken wire, pin
pulled back in the molnex connector or a broken wire inside the power
supply. Easiest fix is to purchase a "y" connector, to allow you to
run two devices from one of the power connectors and just mark the other
molnex connector as bad and don't use it. Very common problem and very
difficult to diagnose, mainly because of weird symptoms that are never
exactly the same. The drive looks like it is alive but it gets it's
ground through the IDE cable which messes up the voltage levels on the
IDE cable and creates the problems that you're seeing.

i DID consider that maybe my ac adapter ("Only" 300 watt)
may be too weak, but that wasnt it either
(i exchanged the vga board for an older one, tuned down the
cpu via bios to lower its power usage and disconnected
all ventilators except the cpu one, but no help there)

i DID consider that maybe my ac adapter ("Only" 300 watt)
may be too weak, but that wasnt it either
(i exchanged the vga board for an older one, tuned down the
cpu via bios to lower its power usage and disconnected
all ventilators except the cpu one, but no help there)

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